Jul 02, 2024 | AI

As we approach the two-year mark since we launched Westlaw Precision, the industry has seen unprecedented development – in many ways instigated by the launch of Chat GPT in November 2022, customers and software developers alike never experienced such exponential opportunity (and some would argue risk).

And here at Thomson Reuters – we haven’t stood still; in fact, we have never moved faster!

Within this 24-month period Professionals no longer need to speculate how AI could affect their work because they now have a better sense of how it will — and in some cases already is.

And for our customers in November 2023, we launched AI-Assisted Research – which allows customers to ask complex legal research questions in natural language and quickly receive synthesized answers, with links to supporting authority from Westlaw content and links to further examine that authority. AI-Assisted Research streamlines the initial phase of legal research with sophisticated answers to questions and the authority those answers are based on, saving hours of work. In fact, this is how one of our valued customers describes the solution:

“Because Thomson Reuters has the best case law database, lawyers can feel confident that the answer AI-Assisted Research is generating in response to our questions is well supported.  The fact that the AI-Assisted Research delivers all the resources it relied upon in coming up the answer, right beneath the answer, amplifies the confidence we all can have in using the program to help with our research needs.” Andrew Bedigian, Larson LLP

And since launch 6k customers have run more than 1.5M searches through AI-Assisted Research. Thomson Reuters closed loop LLM is trained on millions of terabytes of our trusted and verified content – rather than publicly available information – and this generates the most trusted and reliable answer on the market today.

“I did go through and compare the ChatGPT paid version as compared to this AI-Assisted Research. What I can tell you is there is a major difference in the libraries that Westlaw has versus any other program. There is no other program that has the secondary sources, the court orders, the appellate documents, the primary sources – every single thing that Westlaw offers, which is not only on point and published, you have the citations, there’s a source of truth from where the information comes from and it’s only as good as the prompts you give it and the parameters you put.” Jesse Guth, owner, Guth Law Office

Our customers tell us each day what a critical tool AI assisted Research is for their legal research both to those new to the profession and those that are experienced in the field. By design our intuitive user experience guides customers to run follow-up research – AI Assisted Research provides customers with a comprehensive answer which can be easily interrogated, linking to more sources for validation.

“At Blank Rome, we are committed to providing the highest levels of innovative client service. As part of this effort, last year we were excited to implement Westlaw Precision and Practical Law Dynamic AI capabilities for our attorneys, which has resulted in increased efficiencies and enhanced results.”  Frank Spadafino, chief information officer, Blank Rome

Over the years Thomson Reuters has always been at the forefront of legal research innovation, helping customers to reduce research times and ensure nothing important is missed. AI-Assisted Research is among the very best of these tools, and when it’s used as intended, it offers enormous benefits with very little risk of harm. I strongly encourage you to try it yourself – you will find it’s a powerful research tool you’ll want to employ regularly in your research processes.